Dave | unobtrusive lucidity

A Review of “After the Golden Age”

Most writing in superhero mythology paints the heroes as larger than life, more powerful than we could hope to be…gods among us, if you will…swooping in when all hope seems lost to fight the evil that we could never fight ourselves. The heroes are distant, aloof most often, typically because their position and power has left them that way, too far separated by definition from those that they pledge to defend…or, in the case of the villains, attempt to enslave. Due to their power, they can never be like us, and understand the obligation that comes with that power.

The better writing in superhero mythology explores the heroes’ struggle with that power, with a destiny that has often been thrust upon them by forces outside of themselves. They take up the mantel of defender because they have no other option. With great power, Uncle Ben reminds us, comes great responsibility.

The best writing in superhero mythology steps back from this, though, and remembers what the heroes truly are: people like the rest of us, but choosing to use what they have been given for good. Aliens, perhaps, or mutants, but still touched by a common thread of humanity that leads to a driving impulse to preserve life. Our heroes find common ground with us, even when they are so much larger than us.

There are a few explorations of the people behind the masks that are original enough to cause us to re-examine what lies behind their heroic natures, a handful that are memorable enough to, while not re-defining of a genre, certainly motivation to re-examine a genre. Somewhat out of the blue, Carrie Vaughn, a self-proclaimed lover of comic books and superheroes, has done exactly that, and done so with an interesting starting point: what if these huge, larger-than-life, indestructible heroes were but a blip in the history of heroism? What if their self-sacrificial desire to place the good of others, of their cities, before themselves were not tied to their superhuman abilities, but rather merely better facilitated by them? Wouldn’t that make them even greater heroes?

And wouldn’t that widen the definition of who we consider to be a hero, and what we consider heroism to be?

Vaughn’s protagonist, Celia West, is the daughter of the greatest superheroes that Commerce City has known. Her parents formed a team known as the Olympiad, fittingly titled protectors who watch the city from on high and strike hard against evil. Yet, she is born with no abilities, and lives in the shadow of superhuman parents whose superhuman nature has exacted a toll on their family life. Celia fights for good in her own way, however, in her role as an accountant of all things, with the same determination and passion to right wrongs that her parents hold, without all of the grandiose battles and conflicts. Yet, she is constantly compared to them, constantly made to appear to fall short…and constantly haunted by the one mistake for which she will seemingly find no forgiveness, despite her attempts to make her repentance felt.

Vaughn pays homage to the superhero tales of our youth in an offhandedly humorous but deeply respectful way that demonstrates her love for the tradition, gently touching stereotypes with the love of genre conventions without ever making anything seem unbelievable or silly. Her characters stay with you, her succinct prose and thought-provoking dialogue leave the reader with the moments that define a great book: the moments when you have to put the book down and walk away to digest what it is you’ve just read. Vaughn isn’t just de-constructing classic superhero story arcs here, she’s using the mythology to examine much larger questions: destiny vs. free will, the nature of a hero in each of us, the driving impulses behind self-sacrificing behaviors. She’s questioning what it means to be a hero from every angle, and disabusing us of many of the notions that we have held with conviction up to this point. The heroes that are most visible, we realize, perhaps aren’t the greatest heroes after all, but are merely following in the footsteps of heroes that are greater, and more normal, than we might otherwise imagine, heroes whose convictions were stronger than their powers.

This is the first novel I’ve read from Vaughn, and I’m impressed. The pacing is fluid, the story accessible and only minimally predictable. On the rare occasion in which I found myself suspecting that something didn’t fit, she made it fit within a few pages. Vaughn has done something fascinating with superhero culture here, something redemptive in it’s own right. If you grew up in love with these heroes as I did, this is a novel that will broaden the way you think. If you didn’t, you might just find yourself falling in love with the genre for the first time, because it is accessible to everyone in Vaughn’s prose.

In fact, of all the legacy that this book is likely to leave, that may well be its greatest.

An easy read at just under 400 pages, I recommend this novel for anyone.

View all my reviews

There Was a Time…

There was a time…it’s been around two years, now, I think…when I was on a consistent blogging schedule, at least, if not on a regular schedule with other writing projects. I took a sort of pride in it, honestly. I didn’t miss a post on that schedule. I maintained comment chains from the hospital when our daughter was born. I stopped one evening in the middle of our move to New England to write a post. I figured if a major family re-location and having a child didn’t knock me off of a blogging schedule, pretty much nothing ever would. And I’ve always respected blogging as a medium, too. Others have sounded the futurist predictions that long-form blogging is vanishing, falling behind micro-blogging platforms, and I stubbornly maintain this medium, because I think it’s important, that it has something valuable to contribute. It turns out that what finally did knock me off my blogging schedule wasn’t a major re-location or a child, but rather going back to school immediately following those two events, and then two subsequent smaller moves in the same year, all to accomplish that career-change for my day job that I dreamed of.

So, if my writing here has become more sporadic than in the past, it’s not for lack of motivation…it’s a symptom of a larger disorganization. And, as Karen would be quick to point out, that sort of disorganization just comes with having a two-year-old in the house.

And speaking of that two-year-old…she has a toy, a plush soccer ball that she loves to throw around. It’s laying at the other end of the sofa as I write this, having been missed in the nightly cleanup. And it’s poignant to me…poignant enough that instead of pushing through with the book review that I was so excited to write this evening, I’m stopping to write about it instead. Or, rather, the day that left it there.

In fact, of the days before that.

There’s been this interesting paradigm shift in my life now that I get to be creative for a living and not just for a hobby. That paradigm shift is that I don’t come home from a boring job and try to get the creative juices flowing any more. Instead, I tend to bring work home. In fact, I just work from home pretty frequently, especially when winter storms blanket New England (read: every week) and the commute to the office promises to be ugly. I always have side projects that I’m working on, both personal and freelance, anything from writing fiction to programming a website to editing the family photos. In short, I’m always busy. And, at first, that was really, really cool, because I love everything that’s keeping me that way.

Except that there’s a trap that comes with this, I realize now. That trap is that you aren’t able to break away at some point…the obligations become too many, the deadlines too tight, the work too complex and overwhelming. Today, with a winter storm having seriously complicated our plans and eradicated our childcare arrangements, Karen had to make a work obligation and I was working from home as our daughter played. I was pushing to meet a deadline. She wanted to play. We tossed the ball a bit, but then I had to get back to work. We read a book, but then I had to get back to work. She wanted to read the book some more. I couldn’t. So it went.

That girl…she has always been the proverbial apple of Daddy’s eye. I never knew that I could feel the emotions that she has brought out in me…the absolutely unconditional love, the protectiveness, the sense of duty. She has always been Daddy’s girl, and she knows it. She and I have always had a special bond…when she would cry in her first days with us and no one else could calm her down, she hushed when I held her and whispered in her ear. She loves her Daddy. She still wants his attention the way she used to have it.

She doesn’t understand deadlines.

She’s asleep now, the apartment is quiet, and I’m looking over the rim of my laptop at that soccer ball, tossed aside when it proved an unsuccessful way to keep my attention for long enough. I’m thinking of her hugs, which have become tighter, as though she’s holding on and doesn’t want me to go away. I’m treading water in this new lifestyle.

Overall, I truly believe that the changes we’ve made in our family are good. I do. I think that she will benefit from them in the long run. But, I don’t have an experiential referent for this yet, and I have much to learn. Among all of my creative passions, I also have a strong passion to be a good father. Right now, I’m not keeping that obligation, not through lack of desire, but because I don’t have a handle on this new life yet.

I’m working on it. If you’ve been there, and you have advice, I’d love to hear it. Because I’m looking at that soccer ball right now, and I really want to be smiling the next time I find it laying around, not regretting a day of opportunity lost.

A Typographical Formula for Success

A photo of a child's spelling test, and the word "adventurous" mis-spelled

When I saw it, I sort of shook my head, grieved, and went on.

Which is progress, because there was a time, not all that long ago, when I would have raged against it, shouted at the heavens, and inundated every single social media outlet in which I participate to complain about it.

Actually, now that I think about it, I should probably be more concerned that my response was so tame.

The offending thing was in a legal contract that I was reviewing for a project in which I was about to be involved. Going through a binding legal agreement that was about to be entered into between two parties, every nuance of which held meaning and obligations to all parties involved…in short, a document which should never be entered into lightly…I saw it: a typo.

So glaringly obvious that it couldn’t have been missed. Except that it had, as though rushing the document out the door was more important than having someone proofread it.

And I’m going to assume that, had someone proofread it, the error would have been caught, because…well, because otherwise I would lose all faith in an otherwise literate universe.

I see it everywhere on a regular basis. Formal business emails, company blogs, articles…it’s almost as though we’ve forgotten how to use English. In fact, I’ve seen two in a novel recently. I’m more forgiving of that in a way, though, because at least I know that a line-editor has been through it, and, when faced with the daunting task of correcting 500 pages of manuscript, I have difficulty faulting anyone for missing an article.

The issue that I have, see, isn’t that someone would make typos when writing something. Typos abound in my work, especially in first drafts. Spellcheck doesn’t catch everything, or even most things. I think it’s the fact that rushing something to an facsimile of completion, whether it be fiction, a legal document, or a blog post, seems to take precedence over making certain that it’s correct. It’s the rushing that bothers me, because producing something quickly is allowed to take precedence over producing something of quality.

In short, I believe that you can either do something fast, or you can do it well, but the two are mutually exclusive.

Of course, that mentality places me at odds with the driving premise of business today, because business accepts the gospel of time being money, and ultimately is concerned with money over quality. And, if you hadn’t noticed, everything in the U.S. is operated as a business, and the pressure to maximize time has grown exponentially in recent years. Which leads me to believe that more typos and more flippant disregard for this beautiful language of English that has served us so well for so long will continue to increase exponentially, because the time required to do something well will continue to be pushed to the side in favor of a quickly-produced, and thus more profitable, product.

So, in twenty years, we’ll have stopped teaching grammar (Karen’s experiences in the classroom indicate that we already have), and, though we’ll only be reading and writing like fifth graders, we’ll know all about how to make money. Lots and lots of rushed, expendable, unfulfilling and antithetical-to-beauty, money.

Such a brave new world, don’t you think?

Photo Attribution: elginwx under Creative Commons

Reflections on Season 4 of Haven: Why Audrey Parker Can’t Survive

Screenshot of Haven DVD cover I’m always a week or five behind television serials, having “cut the cord” long ago and fitting the Hulu or Netflix viewing into my free time. All that to say, I just finished season four of Haven over the weekend. I’ve watched Haven since episode one, and I’ve been hooked since then. For those of you who don’t follow, the program is loosely based on Stephen King’s novella, The Colorado Kid. Set in a small town called Haven that is situated in Maine, a town that goes through bouts of supernatural affliction known as “the Troubles” every few years, we are greeted in the first season by Audrey Parker, an FBI agent who is in town to investigate both the troubles and the mystery of what happened to the Colorado Kid.

If you’ve never watched but your interest is piqued, spoilers follow.

We’ve watched with fascination as the supernatural tale of Audrey’s reincarnations has played out, as she searches for her identity and fulfills her calling to save those troubled in Haven from their curses. She’s the “good guy,” the superhero, if you will, to the town, one of a set of influences seemingly placed there by outside forces to keep the evil that is the Troubles as bay, to save innocent lives, to prevent the wrong from wreaking havoc on the right.

Except, in season four, the writers have taken Haven through a fascinatingly new twist in the story arc.

After Audrey seemingly sacrificed herself at the end of season 3 to save the town, we find her returning to a Haven continuously troubled this season, and with others following her back from her extra-dimensional journey, as well. One of these men is evil for the sake of evil, and claims to know who Audrey was before she was Audrey, or any of her previous incarnations. What is slowly revealed over the course of the season is that Audrey has not always been good…in fact, far from it. She and this newcomer, William, originally created the Troubles for the pleasure of watching others suffer, and Audrey is now returned to Haven every few years, without a memory, to save the town as penance for her past wrongs.

So, Audrey is still a hero…just of a sort of Ghost Rider nature, if you will.

The cliffhanger upon which we end season four, as I’m sure you know if you’re still reading, is that Audrey has been overcome by Mara, her original identity who is as evil as one might imagine for someone who made the Troubles, and makes her intention to save William, her true evil love, from the abyss quite clear.

Audrey, it would appear, is gone.

Now, she was gone at the end of season three, as well, but was brought back, and, while I was admittedly incredulous at first, the writers made it work. After all, heroes return from the dead all the time, as any comics fan knows. The writers actually wove quite an engaging web as we watched Audrey slowly re-appear, and I’ve been impressed with Emily Rose‘s range as an actor to give depth to the different incarnations of Audrey Parker as she has.

This time, however, the writers have taken us to only one end result that I can find: Audrey has to die.

I mean, really, though. She has to stay dead, too. It’s the only option.

The reason is the same that led me to be incredulous at the beginning of season three. While I can see ways to bring her back within this story arc, all of them would play a bit shallow, I think, and any of them would make this move about hooking the viewer and bringing in ratings. It would be about continuing the story in a similar formula to which the audience has grown accustomed, and wouldn’t move the story forward. The writers have taken the program in a brilliant direction this season, and have now placed themselves into a corner. They have to let Audrey die and the evil Mara continue, because to do otherwise would be untrue to the story. Television serials are notoriously flippant toward their stories for the sake of return viewers, as we know: House died a slow and miserable death, and Bones lost everything that made it worthwhile three seasons ago. What has to happen here is that Haven has to continue, but without Audrey, because the story is about Haven…just as she and Nathan place the good of their town before their own, so must the writers. The story about Haven needs to continue, and it must go on with Audrey’s death.

Not that I’m happy about this. I like Audrey Parker, and I’ll be the first to say that it’s unbelievably tricky to keep a program like this moving without its protagonist. Yet, that is the challenge that the writers now face. Given what’s they’ve done this season, I know they are up to the challenge. The question is, will they go the way that they must?

Reading, Writing, and Football

Crowd at Memorial Stadium used under Creative Commons

When I was deciding on a college after my senior year in high school, I shopped around. My grades were quite good but not the best, so it’s not like I had my choice of anywhere I wanted to go, but I did have some options. I remember looking at the big university in my state…it was down to two schools at that point…and ruling it out altogether. The reason was that it was well-known as a “party school,” and that wasn’t the vibe that I was looking for.

Blame that partially on the fact that I was the socially inept geek for a great deal of my life, perhaps. I sort of fit in better my junior and senior years, or so I thought, but in reality I had just fallen in with the theatre crowd, so it was just a different sort of geeky. Like it or not, I was simply never destined to be the popular guy with the striking date to the prom.

And, in retrospect, I was okay with that. Even then, I was pretty much okay with that.

In college I was a loner a great deal of my freshman year. Partly this was due to the fact that I just didn’t fit in with that particular school (I transferred to what would become my alma mater at the end of my freshman year), but, for whatever the reason,I was the one who generally walked to class alone. My friends were the people with whom I did shows. Even after declaring a theatre major (what would be one of a few that I would declare in my five year plan), I didn’t really go to many parties.

By the time I was in grad school, I was the one in the library on Friday nights.

While the upshot for me was graduating magna cum laude, I hit a lot of social milestones pretty late…all the way from high school on. It’s just sort of the way it worked out. To be honest, while I don’t for a moment like conformity in any way, I have often secretly been jealous of those more extroverted than myself. They seem to just have more fun in life.

That said, there’s such a thing as too much fun…and I don’t mean that from a moralist point of view. This article about college athletes reading at a 5th-grade level last week was disturbing. Karen is an educator, and she has told me stories of college students so far behind in basic skills it made my jaw drop. She’s not the only one of my friends in academic professions to have told me those stories, either. That sort of makes me concerned about what it is that we’re emphasizing as a culture when we end up in this spot.

I have nothing against athletics, mind you…there was a time when my calendar was blocked off for the beginning of basketball season and I was in front of the television punctually. As horrible as I am with a tennis racket in hand, I very much enjoy playing.

I also have nothing against extroverts…they’re annoying sometimes and have too much influence on the way things are structured overall, but some of my best friends (and wife) are extroverts, and I’ve come to understand them.

I think the issue that’s presented in this article is a lack of balance…emphasizing one thing over another, one aspect of life over another, part of our collective personality over another. Where we end up as a result of this is frightening. I don’t want our daughter to grow up in a world like Idiocracy. I don’t want having read more then ten books in high school to define “well read.” I don’t want deep thought…critical thought…to become extinct. That’s a frightening potential world into which to look.

How to solve the issue? I’m no policy maker, and politics give me a headache. Behind it, though, is a cultural shift, a change in paradigm, in what we emphasize. I wish academic institutions would behave as schools, making academics primary and other activities, such as athletics, secondary. I wish we were less compartmentalized and more open to different disciplines talking to each other. I wish that we didn’t emphasize spectacle over substance.

In short, I wish there was a bit more depth to go around, because I’m embarrassed for all of us when these frightening stories become known.

Photo Attribution: Ian Ransley Design + Illustration under Creative Commons